The Half-Giant's Playground
by Emmeebee
Summary: A half-giant faces a whole different array of challenges and obstacles than their human counterparts. As she grows up, learning of her ancestry and about the way her peers react to that, Olympe Maxime has to reckon with the intersection between identity and experiences. One-shot.


A/N: I've touched on Maxime's motivations a few times in Mistaken Damsel and related discussions, so I thought it'd be interesting to look back at her childhood and how it might have led her to that point.

Warning for fat-shaming and schoolyard bullying.

Challenges:

Cluedo/Clue Challenge – prompts: Olympe Maxime, value, fuming

If You Dare Challenge – prompt: rain

* * *

 ** _Eleven years old_**

Nothing fit anymore. Her old robes were all either a touch too short or a smidgen too tight for her to wear them in public. And it wasn't even as if they were old or worn out, either! Most of them had been bought the year before and had already been magically enlarged to maximum capacity since due to past growth spurts. As any more amateur alteration would just destroy the structure of the fabric, she would have to go shopping for more clothes again.

It just wasn't _fair_.

Most of her friends would have been thrilled at the prospect of 'having'to go clothes shopping to replace their wardrobe. They would have seen it as an excuse to buy a whole new array of robes and, if they could convince their parents that they were necessary, accessories. Olympe had once thought that way too, but the fact that it was necessitated by her ever-increasing size had quickly outweighed the enthusiasm she had originally felt.

To be fair, it hadn't come as a complete surprise. She _had_ been eating a lot more than normal lately. But it wasn't as if she could help that! Fighting the hunger just meant she felt sick and weak until she eventually gave up and reverted to her normal diet once again, so she didn't see any point in the exercise.

She was just naturally big.

And, to an eleven-year-old girl, that was the worst thing in the world.

Surrounded by haphazard clusters of discarded robes, she sank to the floor. Tears fell from her eyes like heavy rain running down a bedroom window, its rivulets impairing her vision and cloaking her with misery. Only, if eyes truly were the windows to the soul, it was flipped; she was the outside world, dreary and bleak, while the situation was her mess of a bedroom, confused and disordered and completely inexplicable to the naked eye.

 _Why can't I just be normal?_

-x-o-x-

 _ **Twelve years old**_

"Do you remember what I told you about your mother?"

Olympe tossed the dog-eared novel onto the cushion next to her and turned her attention to her father. "Of course." At his expectant look, she added, "The two of you met shortly after you finished school. You dated for a while, and you had me. But she had to go back to her parents, and they wouldn't have approved of her bringing a baby back with her, so you raised me on your own and register her name with the Ministry."

"Yes. But there's a little more to it than that. I think it's time you knew the whole story, but the rest of it is a secret. It would hurt a lot of people if anyone found out. Will you promise to keep what I tell you secret for me – and for her?"

"Of course," she said again, filled with pride at the notion of being entrusted with such a thing. She and her friends kept secrets for one another all the time, but they were all trivial little things that no one but them really cared about. There was something so much more solemn and exhilarating about keeping a secret on behalf of her _parents_. "You know I will, Daddy."

Although no one else was around, her father leaned in close, as if they were playing a game, and whispered, "Your mother is a giantess."

-x-o-x-

 _ **Fifteen years old**_

Olympe was still contemplating the final point they'd covered in Enchanting when she reached her friends' table in the dining hall. The subject was fascinating, but it was difficult to master. And she was determined to ace it. Only a few of her peers had selected it as an elective; after all, most saw it as pointless due to the high degree of overlap it had with Charms. What they didn't understand was that Enchanting offered a much deeper understanding on the topic and, as such, gave its students much greater control over their spell-casting.

Slipping into an empty seat, she tuned in to the other girls' conversation. Although they paused to greet her, they quickly reverted back to a discussion about, from what she could gather, the respective benefits of different fairytales.

"What's your favourite?" Annie asked her.

" _The Giant's Playground_ ," she replied automatically. After her father had revealed her true heritage, he had started to seek out books and poems depicting giants and half-giants in a good light for her to read. It had been difficult to keep her new interest from her friends over the years, but she had mostly managed to avoid the topic. Technically, she probably should have lied and picked some common fairytale that someone else would have already mentioned, but the idea of outwardly denying it like that seemed traitorous. It was one thing to evade the topic altogether; it was quite another to lie about something that still meant so much to her.

Gigi scrunched up her nose in distaste. "Isn't that the one about the misunderstood giant who everyone thinks is a murderer but who just wants to explore the world?"

"Yes. It has all the features you expect from a fairytale, but it also deals with the issues of discrimination, miscommunication, and assumptions."

The other girl's expression softened, but she didn't look convinced. "Right. Well, I guess that sounds interesting. And fairytales are supposed to be fantastical, anyway, so it's not as if anyone expects everything to be strictly realistic."

"It's perfectly realistic," Olympe protested. "We don't know what goes on in giants' brains. We assume that they're mindless brutes, but they could just as easily be confused innocents, or even bloodthirsty masterminds."

Unfortunately for Olympe, Luc Dubois was passing by their seats as she spoke and overheard her comment. His mouth contorted into a cruel sneer at her words, and he said dryly, "Masterminds? Really? I don't think you know what realism _means_ , Maxime. They're worthless brutes through and through."

"No, they're not. They have just as much worth as me or you!"

With unbridled viciousness, he replied, "I see what's happening here. It's just that you're so tall and fat that you feel more like a giant than a person. You _need_ to believe they're sentient and decent, don't you? Because if _they_ have inherent worth, then maybe _you_ do, too. Then maybe it doesn't matter that you're too tall for a girl and too fat for _anybody_. Well, I'll tell you what; they _don't_ have inherent worth, and neither do _you_."

The shocked gasps and instinctive protests of her friends sounded like white noise in Olympe's ears. A hand found its way to her shoulder, resting there in an obvious attempt at comfort and comradeship. But, even as Gigi snapped that he was a stupid prick and Annie asked what it meant for someone as pathetic as him if somebody as good and thoughtful as Olympe was worthless, all she could hear was his words, spinning around and around in her brain like a playground merry-go-round until she was sure she was going to be sick.

Part of her urged her to confront him, but she knew she didn't have the presence of mind for that. If she tried, she'd probably just end up a blubbering mess and reinforce rather than undermine his claim. "Excuse me," she said with as much frostiness as she could muster up. "I left my textbook in the Enchanting classroom. I'll just run and fetch it."

"You should run," Luc continued, undeterred by her friends. "You need the exercise!"

The vile things he'd said echoed in her head as she existed the room, forcing herself to remain at a composed walk, before breaking into a run. Weaving her way through the crowded corridor on her way to the nearest bathroom, she struggled to fight back the tears that were already welling up in her eyes. She narrowly avoided collision a number of times, but she ignored the resulting cries of shock and irritation. None of that mattered. None of that would ever matter.

 _It isn't fair_ , she thought.

She was the same as the rest of them. Her heritage meant that she had a bulkier physique, but that didn't affect her value as a human – well, more like a _sentient_ – being. Her worth wasn't measured in centimetres or kilograms; it was measured by her actions alone. She was more than the circumstances of her birth.

Yet the reassurance was hollow in the wake of Luc's vitriolic words. However much she told herself those things didn't matter, she knew that they did. Everyone else thought they mattered a great deal. Disagreeing with their premises didn't make their opinions any less real or any less powerful. It didn't neuter it before it could take effect.

It didn't make the sting of their conclusions hurt any less.

 _It isn't fair._

She couldn't imagine how much worse it would have been had Luc known the truth about her mother, nor did she want to.

 _I'm not just keeping this secret for Dad and my mother,_ she realised. _I'm hiding it for me, too._

-x-o-x-

 _ **Eighteen years old**_

The interviewer scrutinised Olympe, staring at her across the lavish office desk situated between them. The younger witch fought the urge to fidget under her intense inspection, wanting to relieve some of her nervousness but knowing that that would do her no favours.

"You seem to have the qualities we're looking for," she finally said. "You're determined, creative, and clearly very clever. The fact that you have social skills is obvious. Where you fall short is your lack of experience, of course, but we could provide you with that training and practice."

Still struggling not to fiddle or, even worse, reveal her sweaty underarms, Olympe nodded. "I'm very aware that experience is an area I'm severely lacking in, and I would be willing and eager to take every opportunity I can to rectify that."

"Eager," the older witch echoed, eyeing Olympe with an assessing gaze that made her flush.

 _Don't appear too eager,_ she reminded herself. "Yes. It's one of my strengths."

"I can see that. But there is one potential issue. Naturally, teaching requires a lot of face-to-face interaction with a range of people – students, parents, fellow professors, board members. A professor's image has a significant impact on how they're viewed and treated. And, to put it frankly, your current image might cause some controversy and suspicion."

"Is it the way I dress?" she asked, purposefully playing dumb. "If I don't look professional enough, I could easily change that."

"Partially. It's more the... Honestly, we don't care if you're a half-giant or not. That's not going to affect whether or not we hire you. What we care about is if it will affect how you present to a class and how they respond to you."

The look in the witch's eyes, however, said otherwise. She might be playing her politically correct game of denying prejudice, but Olympe knew that the problem went deeper than she alleged. Remembering all of the vile things she'd been subjected to over the years, she simply said, "I'm not a half-giant; I just have big bones. That doesn't change how people see me, but I've been dealing with that assumption for years, so I feel that I'm well equipped to handle it in a classroom setting."

She forced herself not to feel bad about her public repudiation. _My value isn't determined by my birth, but it's alright to lie to people who think it is,_ she told herself. _That's just basic self-protection._

-x-o-x-

 _ **Twenty-nine years old**_

The other professors still watched her. Their gazes always darted to her whenever something potentially controversial or revealing was mentioned; when the word giant or half-giant cropped up, when there was a reference to a rebellion or attempted revolution by magical creatures, and when any sort of hate speech was verbalised. They knew she was lying about her ancestry, and they were waiting for her to fail, to crash and burn and have her name added to the long list of half-breeds who just couldn't cut it in proper wizarding society.

It was infuriating. No matter how well she went or high she climbed, there would always be people waiting for her to fall back down again.

Fuming at the injustice of it all, she pushed herself harder. Her achievements might not be seen as the exception to the ineptitude of half-breeds, but her failures wouldn't be attributed to her background, either. It was just simple self-preservation. She would succeed and she would flourish and she would fly. She would be the best, whatever it took; if that meant denying her ancestry, then so be it.

The books and poems she'd once loved were stored in cupboards, kept as a reminder of a time when being a half-giant had been an exciting secret, but hidden away due to a burgeoning hatred of what that meant for her in practical terms. After all, they had lied. Giants and their offspring didn't have worlds and cities to play in and explore. Their monkey bars and slides, their Tic Tac Toe panels and swings, weren't fun and stimulating; they were glass ceilings and claustrophobic spaces, cages and obstacles. A half-giant's playground wasn't a place for entertainment and growth; it was as restrictive as a classified danger zone.

 _I'm not a half-giant,_ she reaffirmed, her thoughts a declaration. _I just have big bones._


End file.
